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Introduction Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-45608-1 - The Nuremberg SS-Einsatzgruppen Trial, 1945-1958: Atrocity, Law, and History Hilary Earl Excerpt More information Introduction Just after midnight on the night of June 7, 1951, five men – Otto Ohlendorf, Paul Blobel, Werner Braune, Erich Naumann, and Oswald Pohl – were exe- cuted for crimes against humanity at Landsberg war crimes prison in Landsberg-am-Lech, Bavaria, southern Germany. The five executions took a little less than two hours and marked the conclusion of an international legal process begun by the Americans in the summer of 1945.Inthe6 years since the end of the war, the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg had housed a number of high-profile war crimes trials; the most renowned was the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in which twenty-two major Nazi war criminals, including Hermann Goring¨ and Albert Speer, were tried by the Allies in the first international court.1 Albeit the most well-known, the IMT was but the first of thirteen so-called Nuremberg war crimes trials that cov- ered an array of crimes not limited to either soldiers or the conduct of the war. Following the IMT, between 1946 and 1949, there were 12 additional Nuremberg trials or NMT, prosecuted by the Americans alone. The subject of this book is one of these trials, Case 9 against Otto Ohlendorf and the SS-Einsatzgruppen leaders, officially titled: “The United States of America v. Otto Ohlendorf et al.,” more commonly known as the Einsatzgruppen case.2 The reference to “military” is confusing and somewhat of a misnomer 1 Important works on the IMT include: Whitney Harris, Tyranny on Trial: The Evidence at Nuremberg (New York, 1954); Wilbourn E. Benton and Georg Grimm (eds.), German Views of the War Crimes Trials (Dallas, 1955); Joe Heydecker and Johannes Leeb, Der Nurnberger¨ Prozeß (Cologne, 1958); Robert Kempner, Das Dritte Reich im Kreuzverhor.¨ Aus den unveroffentlichten¨ Vernehmungsprotokollen des Anklagers¨ Robert M.W. Kempner (Munich, 1969); Bradley F. Smith, Reaching Judgment at Nuremberg (New York, 1977); Robert Conot, Justice at Nuremberg (New York, 1983); Ann Tusa and John Tusa, The Nuremberg Trial (London, 1983); and Telford Taylor, Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir (Boston, 1992). 2 The trial was referred to as the Ohlendorf case because Ohlendorf was the primary defendant. The trial transcript is available from the U.S. National Archives Records and Administration, 1 © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-45608-1 - The Nuremberg SS-Einsatzgruppen Trial, 1945-1958: Atrocity, Law, and History Hilary Earl Excerpt More information 2 The Nuremberg SS-Einsatzgruppen Trial, 1945–1958 as this trial and the eleven other NMT were conducted in civilian, not mil- itary courts. Confusion derives from the fact that the governing body in Germany between October 1946 and April 1949 was the United States mili- tary government (OMGUS), and, hence, they were responsible for overseeing the trials. Even though the tribunals were composed of civilian judges, the Americans preferred to call the tribunals “military” rather than “occupa- tional.” The NMT should not be confused with the proceedings conducted by the United States Military, which were bona fide military trials, held in military courts, against military personnel.3 The NMT were part of the American plan to punish members of the Nazi hierarchy and educate Ger- mans about the criminal and inhumane behavior of their leadership, as well as to assist in the denazification and democratization of Germany. It was believed that if Germans witnessed liberal democratic justice in action – the underpinning of a functioning and healthy democracy – they would eschew their authoritarian tendencies and embrace democracy, its principles, and practice. Nuremberg, it could be argued, was the first example of transi- tional justice. The American trials were held after the major German war criminals had been tried before the IMT at Nuremberg and, hence, became known as the “Subsequent Nuremberg proceedings.”4 In the NMT, the Americans used legal precedents set during the IMT proceedings to try a variety of high- and mid-ranking Nazi civilian and military war criminals. Under these laws, the United States indicted 185 in- dividuals in 12 cases. Four of the defendants committed suicide before they could be tried, and an additional four were judged too sick to stand trial. Thus, only 177 individuals were brought before the courts. Of these, thirty- five defendants were acquitted, twenty-four were sentenced to death, and twenty were sentenced to life in prison, whereas the majority, ninety-eight, were sentenced to prison terms ranging from eighteen months to twenty years. The average sentence for those convicted was 10 years.5 At war’s end, historians estimate that 8 million Germans were members of the Nazi party; needless to say, it was impossible to investigate all of these people, let alone prosecute them in individual trials. How then did the Microfilm Publication M895, The United States of America v. Otto Ohlendorf et al., 38 rolls (from here forward simply Trial, roll, page, or frame). An abridged version of the trial is published as Trials of War Criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, vol. 4 (Washington, 1951; hereafter TWC). Also published by NARA is a comprehensive finding aid to the trial, referred to as “Special List No. 42,” John Mendelsohn (ed.), Nuernberg. War Crimes Trial Records of Case 9: United States of America v. Otto Ohlendorf et al. (Washington, 1978). 3 See n. 129. For a complete history of the twelve Subsequent trials see the American Chief of Counsel, Telford Taylor, Final Report to the Secretary of the Army on the Nuernberg War Crimes Trials under Control Council Law No. 10 (Washington, 1949). 4 In addition to being called the Subsequent Nuremberg proceedings, these trials are also referred to as the Subsequent Nuremberg trials or simply the Subsequent trials or proceedings or the NMT. All of these variations are used throughout. 5 Taylor, Final Report, 90–93. © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-45608-1 - The Nuremberg SS-Einsatzgruppen Trial, 1945-1958: Atrocity, Law, and History Hilary Earl Excerpt More information Introduction 3 Americans decide which individuals to indict? Telford Taylor, the American lawyer in charge of organizing the NMT, decided that each trial should comprise individuals who represented a particular aspect of the Nazi sys- tem. In essence, he wanted to select representative samples from the worst- offending Nazi groups.6 Within these broadly defined groups, defendants were selected for prosecution based on evidence American researchers had unearthed accidentally or in targeted investigations. The groups investigated and tried included: Nazi doctors who had conducted medical experiments on the inmates of death and concentration camps and who had participated in the murder of the mentally ill in the so-called euthanasia program (Case 1); Field Marshal Erhard Milch, who was involved in the slave labor program (Case 2); leading judicial figures from Nazi Germany (Case 3); those involved in the administration of the concentration camp system, such as Waffen SS General Oswald Pohl (Case 4); representatives of three of the major indus- trial combines – Flick, IG Farben, and Krupp – whose companies helped advance the war through the criminal utilization of slave labor (Cases 5, 6, and 10); representatives of the Wehrmacht involved in the murder of civilians (Case 7); representatives of the Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt or Race and Resettlement Main Office (RuSHA) who had been involved in the deportation and murder of Jews from Poland and Western Europe (Case 8); the leaders of the Einsatzgruppen responsible for the mass murder of Soviet Jewry (Case 9); a catch-all trial of government officials involved in the design and implementation of the racial laws, aryanization of Jewish agriculture, and the confiscation of Jewish property (Case 11); and finally, officers of the German High Command who violated the military laws of war, especially with regard to the war on the eastern front (Case 12).7 The charges were far from limited to wartime transgressions; in fact, most of the charges dealt with crimes that spanned the entire life of the regime. The Americans tried fewer than 200 individuals in these 12 trials, but, because of their scope, the Subsequent Nuremberg trials remain, as one historian has observed, “the single most concerted prosecution effort” against Nazi criminals in the postwar period.8 The Subsequent trials involve the prosecution of captured Nazi war crim- inals, who in the historiography of the Holocaust and the Third Reich are referred to as “perpetrators.” This book deals specifically with one group of 6 Taylor, ibid., 106–161 identified five groups for trial: doctors and lawyers; the SS and police; industrialists and financiers; leading military personnel; and government ministers. 7 The transcripts of the 12 NMT are available on microfilm RG 238, from the National Archives of the United States. The proceedings of the trials are published in abridged form as Trials of War Criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, 15 volumes (Washington, 1951, hereafter TWC), sometimes referred to as “the green series.” 8 Dick de Mildt, In the Name of the People: Perpetrators of Genocide in the Reflection of their Post-War Prosecution in West Germany. The ‘Euthanasia’
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